Social evaluation research: the evaluation of two police patrolling strategies.
Daily crime counts on a simple graph can kill—or green-light—an expensive patrol idea in weeks.
01Research in Context
What this study did
The team tested two police patrol styles in one city. One squad only answered home-burglary alarms. The other walked quiet beats and talked with residents.
They tracked burglaries and arrests every day for months. Simple line graphs showed when each patrol started and stopped.
What they found
The burglary-only cars did not change the number of break-ins. The friendly foot patrol did not cut crime either.
Foot officers did make people call the station more, but arrests stayed flat.
How this fits with other research
Lowe et al. (1977) tried the same daily-tracking trick two years later. Night saturation patrols cut crime reports, but day shifts did nothing.
Greene et al. (1978) swapped boots for a helicopter. Their ABAB reversal showed daytime flights slashed home burglaries and saved money.
Bernal et al. (1980) flew the same helicopter over low-density blocks and saw zero effect. Together the four papers say: patrol can work, but only at night, from the air, and in crowded neighborhoods.
If you run large-scale safety programs, copy the daily time-series graph. It tells you quickly whether your shiny new patrol is worth the gas money.
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02At a glance
03Original abstract
In most social evaluation research it is difficult to achieve the degree of experimental rigor possible in an applied behavioral study. This study illustrates how the evaluation researcher can increase experimental rigor in the analysis of social interventions. In the first evaluation, a variation of the time-series design that offered maximum experimental control given the limitations of the situation, was employed to evaluate the effects of a specialized home-burglary police patrol. This design revealed that no effects could be attributed to the patrol. In the second evaluation, a multiple baseline-like design was possible in determining the effects of a police walking patrol. This design revealed that the patrol produced an increase in crime reporting but not in arrests. Social interventions often occur in a manner that allows varying degrees of experimental analysis. The evaluation researcher must attain optimal experimental analysis given the limitations of each social intervention.
Journal of applied behavior analysis, 1975 · doi:10.1901/jaba.1975.8-353